wednesday is one of my days off & john woke up wanting to "get lost" on some country roads. i like to have a little bit more of a destination & plan in mind so i suggested we take a drive to leavenworth, kansas. every time we drove up to the legends, i would see the highway sign for leavenworth & comment that we should go there sometime... so we did.
leavenworth is such a small city that i'm not sure if i should call it a large town instead. there's an army base & a prison and i'd bet dollars to ding dongs that 90% of the population of about 35,000 works at one or the other. fort leavenworth is the oldest active army post west of the mississippi (for more on it's history, click here). leavenworth was the first incorporated city in kansas and pretty much everything i found online (and a lot around the town itself) is quick to remind you that leavenworth is "the first city of kansas". the prison is pretty well known, i remembered it from the story of the birdman of alcatraz (he was at leavenworth prison first).
the drive to leavenworth from lenexa is about 35 miles of tree-lined 2-lane country highways. most of the drive is actually spent in missouri until you reach the missouri river & cross the bridge into town. the first place we visited was the union pacific depot. the present tracks run along the missouri river which is right behind the depot. when we walked in, we saw these huge wooden doors on either side of us, one said men, the other women. we were told this is because the men & women waited for trains separately because men could smoke & women couldn't. the depot was renovated in the late '80's & turned into a YMCA-type affair that also includes banquet & convention facilities. we asked the receptionist lady at the depot for a suggestion for a good, inexpensive lunch. she suggested the high noon saloon & brewery. to read my review on our food blog, click here.
after we had a bite to eat, we drove around to see a few places i found on travelks.com. there's a first city museum... which was closed. the curator works very short hours & wednesday was not one of their days. but we did find a very old school dairy queen on the way there & split a dipped cone. the next place on my list was the carnegie arts center. it's a small gallery, pottery studio, dance studio & print studio in an old carnegie library. after petting a cat that was laying on a window sill of the building, we saw a sign on the door that said "don't let the cat out" so we asked an office worker about it. she said the cat's name was toulouse & they have another named lautrec. she also gave us a little info on the building & a painting they have that is the "painting that carry nation missed".
next, we drove up a random street to see what was marked on a map as "harvey house". when we got there & i saw the sign i realized i had seen something about this guy that started the harvey house restaurants on food network. as i stood there reading the sign, a volunteer who's helping with the house walked by, gave us a bit of history & said that the curator happened to be there if we wanted to see inside. the house is in the beginning stages of being renovated and is not open to the public, so that was really cool... especially since an expert was taking us room to room! one bad thing though: 90 degrees outside inside a house that's over 125 years old with all the windows closed then walk all the way to the third floor. "sweating" is an understatement but it was so interesting, it was worth it.
next we decided to make our way north to the fort & prison area before we did dinner. so, we stopped at a 7-11 and i had the first slurpee of my life (we didn't have a 7-11 anywhere near where i grew up!) and it was okay... better once it started melting. i also had a raspberry nature bar thingy to tide me over till dinner. we drove into the fort & they asked for our driver's licenses. john only had his state id with him so they made us trade places so the mp's wouldn't hassle us. i was hoping for some sort of old fort historical type area... but there isn't one. a lot of the offices and stuff are in repurposed horse barns from the original fort & we did find some of the original buildings, houses & barracks but they aren't really marked as historic sites. we found the buffalo soldier monument & it was really cool. then we drove by the prison. i don't know if there's any kind of tour or anything, i just wanted to see it.
finally we tried to decide what to do for dinner. the dude at the harvey house suggested a bbq place but we didn't really want anything that heavy or involved so we headed toward one of the places i found on travelks.com: the santa fe depot dinner. it's housed in the original leavenworth train depot but unfortunately it wasn't open when we got there. so, next on my list was pullman place. they were open & it was a winner! i'm so glad we went there. the food was excellent & the atmosphere was relaxed & comfortable. i'll be writing about the experience at the food blog in the next day or so.
after dinner we left town. with all the walking & the heat i was just exhausted. it was a great day spent in a fun little town with my sweetie. what a fun day off... i'll have to find some more kansas towns to visit! check out pictures from the day at my photoblog.
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